Tell us about your new novel, Injury Time.
It’s about a privileged man whose life is thrown into disarray by a sexual accusation from the past, but it’s also about money, class, identity and, I suppose, guilt. It’s set in a small Northern Irish town just after Brexit. I wanted to explore the Protestant merchant mindset, which doesn’t often feature in Irish fiction.
Your 2012 debut, Jammy Dodger, was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize for New Fiction.
Jammy Dodger is about a literary hoax in the late 1980s Belfast arts world. It’s also a satirical coming-of-age novel, celebrating that all-too-brief interlude when we’re young and invincible.
Although set in the North, the political takes a back seat to the personal. Does the recent conflict inevitably cast a shadow, though?
The idea behind Jammy Dodger was that despite the atrocities going on around them, these two young lads spend their days blithely quoting poetry and trying to swindle the Arts Council. The Troubles are tangential in the novel, in the wing-mirror, as it were.
Your work reminds me of the blackly comic fiction of Colin Bateman, with whom you share a hometown, Holywood, Co Down, and a former profession, journalism.
Well, Colin actually lives up the coast, in Bangor, but yes, there is some overlap. I’ve always admired his comic confidence with the Northern Irish landscape. I think I’m trying more for a comedy of manners and the ironic twist in literary fiction that I love in Evelyn Waugh or, more recently, Jonathan Coe.
RM Block
Your acclaimed 2016 novel The Voyage of the Dolphin touches on the 1916 Rising from the unlikely angle of a trio of Trinity students on a quixotic trip to the Arctic. One character, Crozier, bears your middle name. Are you related to the Banbridge-born Arctic explorer?
My mother insists we’re related, but I’ve never found a definitive link. The possibility, though, of a connection to Francis Crozier and the mysterious Franklin expedition was certainly in the background to that book.
There aren’t enough funny novels. Which are your favourites?
The Information by Martin Amis, Scoop by Evelyn Waugh, Don Quixote by Cervantes. Among contemporaries, Nina Stibbe is beautifully wry, so is Kevin Barry, and I recently enjoyed Rónán Hessian’s ticklish deadpan in Ghost Mountain. There’s even a lurking comedy in Anna Burns’s Milkman, which shows how humour can work in very dark material.
You were raised in the North and now live in Dublin, having worked for many years as a foreign correspondent. Where do you feel most at home? What’s your take on those compass points?
I’ve lived in Dublin for over 25 years, so it’s now home, but whenever I leave the North I do feel a pull – a hankering for that coded familiarity. I’ve explored something of that bittersweet connection in Injury Time. I was a foreign correspondent in early 1990s Romania, just after the revolution – an experience I’ll shape into a future book, I hope.
Which projects are you working on?
I’m pondering a novel set in contemporary Dublin. I’m also trying a nonfiction book about Lough Erne in Co Fermanagh, a place that means a lot to me.
Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?
I recently went up to Carrowdore, on the north Down coast, to visit the grave of Louis MacNeice. Someone quotes him in my new novel, so he was on my mind.
The best writing advice you have heard?
Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose” (Elmore Leonard).
You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?
I’d abolish any kind of “clapping-along” behaviour at concerts.
Which public event affected you most?
The signing of the Good Friday Agreement. I was driving to Belfast to help cover the story when the news broke, and had to pull over, to process the swarm of emotions.
The most remarkable place you have visited?
The Pantanal in Brazil, which is full of marvellous creatures: jaguars, alligators, butterflies the size of your head. Sadly, it’s under threat from climate change.
What is your most treasured possession?
A pine travelling trunk that my grandfather took to Trinity in 1916. It’s now filled with half-empty bottles of undrinkable liqueurs.
What is the most beautiful book you own?
A Folio edition of Treasure Island, illustrated by Sterling Hundley – always a pleasure to open.
Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?
Muriel Spark, Zadie Smith, Wilkie Collins and Philip Larkin (if he didn’t sulk).
Which current book, film and podcast would you recommend?
An Aran Keening by Andrew McNeillie; Freaky Friday; The Mystery of Zebras, Bears and Barrels of Whiskey – a fascinating tale of the Dunville whiskey dynasty, and what might be stashed in tunnels beneath my hometown.
The best and worst things about where you live?
I have two hectic springer spaniels so the best thing is definitely the Phoenix Park. The worst? There’s a guy somewhere over the back wall with a woodchipper. I hate him.
What is your favourite quotation?
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall” (The Great Gatsby).
Who is your favourite fictional character?
John Yossarian from Catch-22.
A book to make me laugh?
The Information by Martin Amis, though it never fails to hurt.
A book that might move me to tears?
The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban, which I used to read to my daughter. Hankies out, every time.
Injury Time by Kevin Smith is published by Lilliput Press
